Kevin de Bruyne: Best Midfielder in the world
Kevin de Bruyne is a Belgian professional footballer who plays for Premier League team Manchester City FC and the Belgian national team as a midfielder. He is also the vice-captain of his club. Before joining Manchester City in August 2015, he played for KRC Genk, Chelsea, Werder Bremen and VfL Wolfsburg.
De Bruyne first caught the eyes of Chelsea after impressing for Genk in the 2010-11 season bagging 5 goals and 14 assists across 32 games in the league as well as the playoffs. Chelsea bought De Bruyne for €8 million in January 2012 but sent him back on loan to Genk for the remainder of the season. After his loan spell ended, De Bruyne returned to Chelsea but was again loaned out, this time to Bundesliga team Werder Bremen for the 2012-13 season. He made 34 appearances and had 20 goal involvements (10 goals and assists each) for the team from Northern Germany. He returned to Chelsea for the 2013-14 season but played less than 500 minutes across 3 competitions due to a combination of injuries and not fitting in coach Jose Mourinho’s system (the likes of Oscar and Willian played more than the Belgian).
The turning point in De Bruyne’s career came in January 2014. Due to a lack of game time at Stamford Bridge, De Bruyne left Chelsea for Wolfsburg for a fee of around €22 million in January 2014. He played at the Volkswagen Arena for the next 1½ years where he would take Bundesliga by storm scoring 20 goals and providing 37 assists. He won the Footballer of the Year (Germany) in 2015.
De Bruyne impressed for Wolfsburg so much that Manchester City paid a club record fee of €76 million to bring him to the Etihad Stadium. And he has been an unqualified success for City making 222 appearances, contributing 57 goals and 89 assists as of the end of 2019-20 season. He has Statistically, his best season came in the 2019-20 season where he was involved in 39 goals (16 goals and 23 assists). He won the Premier League Player of the Season, the PFA Players' Player of the Year and the UEFA Champions League Midfielder of the Season for the 2019-20 season. De Bruyne has been capped 76 times for Belgium and he has scored 19 times as of October 2020. He was part of the 2018 FIFA World Cup Dream Team.
De Bruyne is a complete midfielder who prefers to play as a central midfielder or as an attacking midfielder. He can also be used on the wing occasionally. He possesses great technique, athleticism, crossing accuracy, vision, wide range of passing and a powerful long-range shooting ability with both feet. Although he lacks serious strength, pace and heading ability, he makes it up by having good dribbling skills, elegance on the ball, tactical intelligence, positional sense and being a good set-piece taker amongst many abilities. De Bruyne will play a significant role for Manchester City and Belgium should they win the UEFA Champions League and an international trophy respectively in the near future.
